You don't like the idea, Dave - but we WILL have our say on the EU!

Choice: Harold Wilson's Labour party promised to hold a referendum on the issue of the European Economic Community in 1974

As we gear up to remember the anniversary of D-Day on June 6th 1944, when British, American and Commonwealth troops stormed the beaches of Normandy to begin the long and bruising battle to liberate France and Europe from Nazi German tyranny, another D-Day anniversary falling on June 6th should also come to mind.

For on that day in 1975 the people of Britain voted in a referendum confirming that they wanted to stay inside the organisation then known as the European Economic Community (EEC), which the Euro-fanatic Prime Minister Edward Heath had signed up to in 1973.

As per normal, the British people had not been asked by their rulers whether they approved this momentous decision, but in the two General Elections of 1974 Harold Wilson's Labour party promised to give the people - for the first time in British history - their say by holding a referendum on the issue. That pledge may have been the deciding factor in winning Labour a narrow majority, especially after the influential Tory Enoch Powell advised his supporters to vote Labour on the issue.

Of course, there were political reasons behind Wilson committing his party to a referendum: Labour, like the Tories then and now, were deeply split over Europe and a referendum pledge was devised by the wily Wilson to paper over those cracks and superficially unite his party.

In 1975, ' Europe' was apparently a much more attractive proposition than it is today. Britain was a strike-torn mess, its antiquated, rust-belt industries falling further and further behind its competitors. In comparison, continental Europe appeared sleek, modern, prosperous and going places. Becoming part of what seemed merely an efficient trading bloc made sense to a majority of people. Unfortunately, few read the small print about where the 'European project' was really going: towards a dictatorial, bureaucratic and above all undemocratic nightmare.

Prospects: Compared to strike-ridden seventies Britain, Europe appeared modern, prosperous and ambitious - a far cry from how it is perceived today

Britain had left it far too late to board the European bus, which (to mix metaphors) had become a building with its dictatorial foundations set in stone. Largely run by French civil servants, paid for with German money, skewed to prop up such monstrosities as the Common Agricultural Policy, Britain's influence over this Leviathan would always be minimal. Any idea that we could renegotiate our club membership would remain a fantasy. All we were asked to do was pay our membership dues (the second highest after Germany) into the bottomless coffers of this corrupt and wasteful sink.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Share

Heath, who despite his comprehensive rejection by voters at the ballot box, led the 'Yes' referendum campaign, lied through his teeth when he assured sceptics that EEC membership would entail no loss of sovereignty. We would, he claimed, continue to be governed by our own elected representatives rather than the commissars in Brussels. Heath's message was reinforced by the political class, in the shape of the official leadership of all three mainstream parties who uniformally backed a 'Yes' vote, and by the mass media who dutifully echoed that message. The 'No' campaign was headed by a motley crew of politicians widely portrayed as maverick eccentrics or Right- or left-wing extremists like Powell and Tony Benn. As a result the 'No' campaign were lucky to get as many votes as they did: the electorate voted by more than 2:1 (67-32%) to stay in the EEC.

Support: Heath led the 'Yes' referendum campaign, based on assurances that EEC membership would not compromise sovereignty

Since that dread day, things have changed somewhat. In a nutshell, the EEC has morphed into the EU - a political project to unite Europe in a dictatorial superstate, reducing Europe's proud and ancient nations to a collection of provinces run by an unelected caste based in Brussels. This is hardly surprising since democracy in Europe is such a fragile plant: most EU states have within living memory been Fascist or Communist dictatorships, and Frau Merkel, the woman who wields the whip hand in Europe, grew up in Communist East Germany. Besides, it was always the secret intention of the EU's founding fathers to build their superstate behind the backs of Europe's peoples, walling them into a cell of 'ever closer union' until it was too late to escape.

Britain, however, the country of the Levellers, the Chartists, the Tolpuddle martyrs and the Suffragettes, struggled for centuries to evolve its Parliamentary democracy, and was and is not minded to throw it away lightly for a mess of Brussels pottage. Especially as the wheels have so catastrophically come off the European project, which has proved itself, as the currently unfolding Greek tragedy shows, not the wave of the future, but a tsunami that threatens to drown us all.

Timing: David Cameron must now recognise that now is the time to hold a referendum

Perceiving all this, Ed Miliband's Labour party has started to shift its ground. That reliable political weather-vane, Peter Mandelson, was the first to suggest, last week, that the party if in government again, might hold another referendum on Europe. His call has now been taken up by Miliband's new policy chief, Labour MP Jon Cruddas - a down to earth old Labourite with his finger on the pulse of popular feeling. Even Labour's Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls (who, lest it be forgot devised Gordon Brown's 'five tests' that kept us from Tony Blair's insane desire to join the crumbling Euro) - has hinted that the time may be coming when a referendum is inevitable.,

Labour know that Europe's tectonic plates are shifting. They also know that a majority of Britons now want a fundamental re-ordering of our dysfunctional relationship with the EU - and failing that, a complete withdrawal from the whole poisonous and imploding mess. There are, in other words, votes to be won by reverting to its traditional Euroscepticism. Lots of them. David Cameron, on this issue as so many others, out of step with his party, is a Europhile in the Heath mould ( he even used to wear the EU's hated logo on his cufflinks). A faithful lackey of Brussels, he will never grant an 'In/Out' referendum - which may be his downfall.

The Referendum is an idea whose time has come at last, and unless Cameron is very careful, Labour will steal UKIP's clothes, and, following Harold Wilson's example in 1975, give the British people the choice they have been denied for 37 long years. If they do that, they will win the next Election.